Epistemic status: Purely vibes based based off four days in Vienna. Almost zero research or knowledge of anything Austrian. Actual Austrians should read at their own peril.
Another Hungarian immigrant in Vienna :) I think it is precisely the boringness. All my life I had issues with anxiety. Some boringness is welcome.
Yet, there are times when the hobbitness of the place annoys me. For example, there are beaches on the Donau for tanning and swimming. Now what I would expect from beaches is a bit of a Rio spirit, cocktails, people dancing to DJ house music with congas... the reality is beer, and either no music or very bad radio.
One example of the hobbitness is that food, while good, restaurants tend to have short menu cards and every place has almost the same food. This is even more so for street food, every Würstelstand and kebab ever selling exactly the same. There is just no innovation.
Hi! I saw your substack because you comment on a lot of the same blogs I read.
I had the same experience of Vienna, except in my head I have a huge association of it with music.
I also did the four day thing, en route to somewhere else, two of us with a small child a few years ago (pre COVID). They playgrounds, for an American, were something else. Two story, wooden, climbing things, water play areas. I've only seen a few like this in the US, historical vestiges of better times. There weren't a ton of kids but kids there were.
This is speculation, but the downtown may be hollowed out, as reportedly in other European cities, by airbnbs and the apartments all bring rented to tourists. We stayed in one such, anyway.
Also, the airport was a hub for discount airlines, which was interesting. Don't know if it still is.
We saw the ponderous Imperial museum (I forget its name). The empire is long gone but its stamp can still impress.
The discount airlines thing would explain how I ended up there (I basically went with "the cheapest flight to an interesting-sounding european city for my vacation).
I really loved the playgrounds, Munich and Berlin were also great like that when I was there last year. Wish more US cities had some of that.
Nice! Did you go with kids as well? We were limited in what we could see (see: toddler), so we stayed in the very touristy areas. But I also really like the trains and their user-friendliness. (Compare to NYC subways and the general lack of elevators. Then try the same, with the same toddler, at rush hour.)
Yeah, I think the trains were great just because they were maximally simple - New York train stations are just huge, which (aside from making them expensive and hard to maintain) makes them really frustrating to navigate (especially with children or luggage).
Another Hungarian immigrant in Vienna :) I think it is precisely the boringness. All my life I had issues with anxiety. Some boringness is welcome.
Yet, there are times when the hobbitness of the place annoys me. For example, there are beaches on the Donau for tanning and swimming. Now what I would expect from beaches is a bit of a Rio spirit, cocktails, people dancing to DJ house music with congas... the reality is beer, and either no music or very bad radio.
One example of the hobbitness is that food, while good, restaurants tend to have short menu cards and every place has almost the same food. This is even more so for street food, every Würstelstand and kebab ever selling exactly the same. There is just no innovation.
I think the secret is that everybody is old.
Hi! I saw your substack because you comment on a lot of the same blogs I read.
I had the same experience of Vienna, except in my head I have a huge association of it with music.
I also did the four day thing, en route to somewhere else, two of us with a small child a few years ago (pre COVID). They playgrounds, for an American, were something else. Two story, wooden, climbing things, water play areas. I've only seen a few like this in the US, historical vestiges of better times. There weren't a ton of kids but kids there were.
This is speculation, but the downtown may be hollowed out, as reportedly in other European cities, by airbnbs and the apartments all bring rented to tourists. We stayed in one such, anyway.
Also, the airport was a hub for discount airlines, which was interesting. Don't know if it still is.
We saw the ponderous Imperial museum (I forget its name). The empire is long gone but its stamp can still impress.
The discount airlines thing would explain how I ended up there (I basically went with "the cheapest flight to an interesting-sounding european city for my vacation).
I really loved the playgrounds, Munich and Berlin were also great like that when I was there last year. Wish more US cities had some of that.
Re downtown being hollowed out, it did feel touristy but I think the part where it felt old and past its prime is just true - looking at demographics, the median age is about 50 https://www.citypopulation.de/en/austria/wien/_/90001__wien/
Nice! Did you go with kids as well? We were limited in what we could see (see: toddler), so we stayed in the very touristy areas. But I also really like the trains and their user-friendliness. (Compare to NYC subways and the general lack of elevators. Then try the same, with the same toddler, at rush hour.)
I am, unfortunately, childless as of now :(
Yeah, I think the trains were great just because they were maximally simple - New York train stations are just huge, which (aside from making them expensive and hard to maintain) makes them really frustrating to navigate (especially with children or luggage).